Charlaine Harris - Grave Secret

“You know their house number?”

“No, but it’s on Malden, and it’s a block or two west of this house,” she said. “It’s a brown house with white shutters. Tammy drives a white car.”

“Thanks.”

She nodded and shut her door.

I relayed all this to Tolliver, who’d remained in the car.

With some difficulty, we tracked down a house we thought was the right one. “Brown” covers a lot of territory. But we suspected a sort of flesh-colored house might fall under the umbrella of brown, and there was a white car in front.

“Tammy,” I said when she answered the door. Tammy-whose last name was Murray, I suddenly remembered-had aged more than the eight years since Cameron had been gone. She had been a full-figured woman of mixed race, with wavy reddish hair and a flamboyant style. Now her hair was cropped very short and slicked to her head with some kind of gel. She had tattoos running down her bare arms. She was gaunt.

“Who are you?” she asked with some curiosity. “You know me?”

“I’m Harper,” I said. “Matthew Lang’s stepdaughter. My brother is in the car.” I pointed.

“Come in,” she said. “Tell your brother to come, too.”

I went back to the car and opened the door for Tolliver. “She wants us to come in,” I said quietly. “You think that’s all right?”

“Should be,” he said, and we walked back to the porch.

“What happened to you, Tolliver?” Tammy said. “You’re all banged up.”

“I got shot,” he said.

This was a place where no one would be surprised by that, and Tammy only said, “Bad luck, man!” before moving aside so we could enter.

The house was tiny, but since there wasn’t much furniture, it didn’t feel too crowded. The living room was big enough for a couch, where a figure was lying wrapped up in a blanket, and a battered recliner, clearly Tammy’s normal station. It was flanked by an old TV tray laden with a remote control, Kleenex, and a package of cigarettes. Everything smelled like cigarette smoke.

We came around the corner of the couch to look at the man lying on it. If I hadn’t known this was Renaldo, I would never have guessed it. Renaldo, who was also of mixed race, had always been light skinned. He’d also had a pencil mustache and worn his hair pulled back in a braid. Now his hair was cut very short. At one time, Renaldo had made what passed for good money in our neighborhood, because he’d been a mechanic at a car dealership, but his drug habit had cost him his job.

His eyes were open, but I couldn’t tell if Renaldo was registering our presence or not.

“Hey, honey!” Tammy said. “Look who’s here. Tolliver and his sister, you remember them? Matthew’s kids?”

Renaldo’s eyelids flickered, and he murmured, “Sure, I remember.”

“I’m sorry to see you in such bad shape,” Tolliver said, which was honest if not tactful.

“Can’t walk,” Renaldo said. I looked around for a wheelchair and glimpsed one leaning against the back door in the kitchen. It almost seemed that since the house was so small, opening up the wheelchair would be a waste of time, but I guess Tammy couldn’t lift Renaldo.

“We had a wreck,” Tammy said. “About three years ago. We’ve had some bad luck, sure enough. Here, Harper, take this chair and I’ll get a couple from the table in the kitchen.”

Tolliver looked frustrated that he couldn’t go to get the chairs, but Tammy didn’t think anything about doing it herself. She was used to a male that was helpless. I didn’t ask any more questions about Renaldo’s condition, because I didn’t want to know. He looked bad.

“Tammy,” Tolliver said after he and our hostess had wedged themselves into the folding chairs, which barely fit in the room, “we need to talk about the day my father was here, the day Cameron was taken.”

“Oh, sure, that’s all you folks ever want to talk about,” she said, and made a face. “We’re tired of talking about that, ain’t we, Renaldo?”

“I’m not tired of it,” he said, in his oddly muffled voice. “That Cameron was a fine girl; losing her was bad.”

I felt like I’d bitten a lemon, the idea of someone like Renaldo looking at my sister made me feel so sour. But I tried to keep a pleasant expression on my face. “Can you please tell us again about that day?” I said.

Tammy shrugged. She lit a cigarette, and I tried to hold my breath as long as I could. “It’s been a long time,” she said. “I can’t believe me and Renny been together that long, can you, baby?”

“Good years,” he said, with an effort.

“Yeah, we had some good ones,” she said tolerantly. “These aren’t them, though. Well, that afternoon, your dad called, wanted to do some business with Renny. He told the cops he was going to take some stuff to the recycle with Renny, but that wasn’t the truth. We had an overstock on Oxys; your dad had some Ritalin he wanted to swap for it. Your mama, she loved her Oxys.”

“My mom loved everything,” I said.

“That is the truth, child,” Tammy said. “She loved her pills.”

“And her alcohol,” I said.

“That, too,” Tammy said. She looked at me. “But you aren’t here about your mother. She’s dead and gone.”

I shut my mouth.

“So my dad wanted to come over,” Tolliver prompted.

“Yes,” Tammy said, taking a big drag on her cigarette. I was afraid I was going to start coughing. “He came over about four. Give or take fifteen minutes. It might have been as late as four fifteen, four twenty-five, but it wasn’t any later than that, because the TV show I was watching was over at four thirty, and he was at our house by then and in the pool room with Renaldo. They were playing a game. We had a nicer house.” She looked around the tiny room. “Bigger. I told the police, I think he was here by a few minutes after four. But I wasn’t paying too much attention until my program ended, and they called to me to bring them a beer.”

Renaldo laughed, an eerie huh-huh-huh sound. “We drank us some beer,” he said. “I won the game. We swapped some pills, made a deal. That was a good time.”

“And he stayed here until he got a phone call?”

“Yeah, he had a cell phone, you know, for business,” Tammy said. “That guy who lived next door to you-all, he was calling to tell Matthew to get his ass home, the cops were all over the place.”

“Was he surprised?”

“Yeah,” Tammy said, somewhat to my surprise. “He thought they were there about the drugs, and he flipped out. But he figured he’d better go home rather than run, because he knew your mama couldn’t stand up to being questioned.”

“He did?” I was really astonished.

“Oh, yeah,” Tammy said. “He had big love for Laurel, you know, girl.”

Tolliver and I exchanged glances. If Renaldo and Tammy were right, Matthew hadn’t known anything about Cameron’s disappearance. Or could he have been acting, to establish an alibi?

“He had a fit,” Renaldo mumbled. “He didn’t want that girl gone. I visited him at the jail. He told me he was sure she run away.”

“Did you believe him?” I leaned forward and looked at Renaldo, which was painful but necessary.

“Yes,” Renaldo said clearly. “I believed him.”

There wasn’t much point staying after that, and we were glad to get out of the reeking little house and away from its hopeless inhabitants.

I could hardly wait for Tolliver to buckle his seat belt. I backed out of the yard without having any idea where we were going. I began to drive back to Texas Boulevard, just to have a direction. “So, what do you think?” I asked.

“I think Tammy is repeating what my dad told her,” Tolliver said. “Whether or not he was telling the truth, that’s another thing.”